Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

So live that when thy summons comes to joinThe innumerable caravan that moves...To that mysterious realm, where each shall takeHis chamber in the silent halls of death,Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothedBy an unfaltering trust, approach thy graveLike one who wraps the drapery of his couchAbout him and lies down to pleasant dreams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He's got an idea the skyscraper of the future'll be built of steel and glass.... We've been experimenting with vitrous tile recently... crist-amighty some of his plans would knock you out... He's got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he's found New York of brick an that he's goin to leave it of steel... steel an glass.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptac...le in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies b...ehind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,To send it sailing out the attic window...Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,Tried to improve on sailing like a tileBy flying like a bird (silent in flight,But all the burden of its body song)....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

At the stumbling of a horse, the fall of a tile, the slightest pin prick, let us promptly chew on this: Well, what if it were deat...h itself? And thereupon let us stiffen and fortify ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

We like the chase better than the quarry.... And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending... a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »